Amazon UK Users Will Be Able To Track Packages In Real-Time All The Way To Door

Most of us know the anxiety of tracking a highly anticipated package (especially a pricey, highly anticipated package). You follow it online from warehouse to distribution center to shipping hub to receiving center and then it goes on “on truck for delivery,” meaning that you’ll probably get it at some vague, undetermined point before the end of the day. But rather than hope you are around to receive the item — lest the delivery driver just hurls it over your fence — wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly when it’s coming?

That’s a luxury that some Amazon customers in the UK are apparently about to discover for themselves, as The Verge reports that the online retailer is going to be among those companies to try Interlink Express’s “Follow My Parcel” service.

The service first alerts recipients, via text message, on the morning of a scheduled delivery. The text gives the customer an initial one-hour window for the estimated time of delivery, but it will also contain a link to a map that shows the driver’s location in real time, giving you a 15-minute heads-up before the truck shows up outside your door.

That means you shouldn’t have to worry about being in the bathroom or on the phone (or on the phone in the bathroom) when the driver arrives. It also means you won’t be wasting an entire day for a delivery that only requires about 15 seconds of your time.

Interlink tells The Verge that Amazon UK will use the service through sister company DPD, which handles many express deliveries for the online giant.

Let’s hope this is a huge, mammoth success and that UPS and FedEx adopt something similar here in the U.S.

Meanwhile, let’s just pray that the Postal Service manages to come up with a tracking system that provides any useful information whatsoever.